In telephone network, the caller subscribers are normally billed for the calls.
However there are exceptions, i.e. certain subscribers accept to pay the cost of the calls they receive, such acceptance being either systematic (toll-free number) or on a call by call basis depending on the identity of the caller, with payment against prior validation (collect call, abbreviated CC).
This invention concerns the latter mode of operation with individual agreement.
Classically, the subscriber called by another subscriber is warned of the CC call by a telephone operator, who obtains the consent of the person called before transferring the call.
Such operation has shortcomings.
Indeed, the person called must be present, so that a caller cannot transfer free of charge a voice message on the answering machine of the person called or a fax or any other data through a communications terminal. In addition, all network operators do not offer such service free of charge.
This invention intends to avoid these shortcomings by using currently known means to identify the caller.
For this purpose, the invention concerns, first of all, a procedure to establish a communication between two data transmission terminals of data transmission network organized in order to supply the identity of a calling terminal to a cold terminal, a procedure characterized by the fact that:
the terminals memorize a table of terminal numbers of correspondents,
at the time of the call, command is given to the network to supply the identity of the calling terminal to the terminal called,
in the terminal called, the identity of the calling terminal is compared to the content of the table and,
if they are consistent, the terminal called-calls back the calling terminal.
Thus, the network itself is exploited in a banal way, without resorting to a free of charge calling service, and it is the calling terminal that commands remotely, depending on its identity, the terminal called so that the latter calls back, if it accepts, the calling terminal and/or one of several other pre-established terminals. Consequently, this identity is a control key of one or several actions of the terminal code.
The acceptance of a return call by the terminal called initially is memorized and identified according to the caller; thus, the terminal originating the call can, even in the absence of the subscriber at the terminal initially called, enter in communication with the latter and transmit to him all information, voice or data.
In particular, the invention has the advantage of allowing the bearer of a cell phone who cannot simply call another terminal to ask him to call back, to call from a booth pertaining to the switch telephone network in order to command remotely a call on his portable telephone.
Thus, the invention concerns a data transmission terminal for the embodiment of the procedure under the invention, including contact and numbering interface means on a line of a data transmission network and means to detect line signals representing an identity number of a calling terminal, characterized by the fact that it includes means for numbering processing in order to seek any number detected by the detection means in a memory table and, in this case, command a call to be made to a number corresponding to the number received, through the interface.